MONICET- The whale watching companies and the public at the service of the knowledge and conservation of the Azores cetaceans

MONICET is a platform bringing together observations made by whale watching companies as they go about their daily business of taking people to see those magnificent and intriguing creatures. While catering for a pleasant experience for their clients, skypers and guides note the species observed, count the animals, and record their position. They also take pictures of particular features of the animals, such as the fluke of a diving sperm whale. On land this information is uploaded to a dedicated online database.

The MONICET platform converts the raw data provided by the committed participating companies into valuable information for the public, for the companies themselves and for scientists. On this site you can look at the patterns of species distribution, see how their numbers change in time, and investigate the movements of individual animals through photo-identification.